Isosorbide and various other dianhydrosugars are commercially valuable for a variety of applications such as use as copolymers for improving properties of polymer materials, for use as therapeutic agents, emulsifiers or as biodegradable surfactants. Conventional dehydration of sugars typically produces multiple anhydrosugars and/or dianhydrosugars products, and can also result in formation of various byproducts. During the production of dianhydrosugars, the generation of multiple monoanhydrosugar intermediates can result in low selectivity with respect to the desired dianhydrosugar product. Conventional sugar dehydration processes can typically produce significant amounts of undesired monoanhydrosugars as intermediates which limits selective production and yield of the desired dianhydrosugar.
It is desirable to develop alternative methods for dianhydrosugar production.